Colour Sounder Options

[Jusel]

Looking at upgrading to a colour sounder. Budget is limited to about $1,500. Mostly fishing offshore reefs in water up to about 40 metres deep. Have been looking at the Navman 4500, Lowrance X107CDF and the Furuno F600.

Interested in peoples thoughts on these and any others that fit in this price bracket.

[banshee]

The Furuno is repairable,the Lowrance isn't and I'm not sure about the Navman, so later on down the track when your warranty is gone the Furuno wont end up in the bin,in my opinion the quality is better with Furuno and they don't tweek their power rating I ran Lowrance gear for years (still use one of their ploters) and my 375 watt sounder was so far behind a mates 350 watt Furuno sounder it wasn't funny.I will say that Lowrance has the best warranty dept I have ever dealt with bar none.The FCV 600L should work a treat out to 50 fathoms.No doubt others will sing the praises of the others,the best thing you can do is get into a few boats useing the different ones your looking at.

[redspeckle]

I have recently bought the Furuno 600L color sounder
I was tossing up with the Lowrance X107CDF for about $900 and the JRC FF50 for about $2000 a great sounder too but ended up buying the Furuno FCV600L $1200 including transom transducer
The reason one me over was its keypad easy to operate not scrolling thorugh menu , 50/200kHz is good feature too
After few more fishing trips with it I will be getting its full potential out of it
I am liking the Furuno so far [smiley=thumbsup.gif]
I hope this help You
Mitch

[revs57]

G'day Jusel,

Check out the Raymarine Digital series Ds500-600X really happy with my 500X used it for 12 mths in our tinnie....clear definition, performed really well...and for $1500 you could boot up to a 1kw transducer through hull...I thought I'd give that a go...not because I was unhappy...but was tols it really enhanses a very good picture with even more definition...We've done that on the newbie...hopefully see how it operates shortly

Cheers

Rhys

[nevd]

Navman sounders are repairable in Australia, but Raymarine DS series are not. My experience with Raymarine is not good, poor shallow water performance and most setttings lost when unit turned off. Suggest you search Raymarine in old posts as there has been much earlier discussion.